Fernando Ortega at Palais de Tokyo

June 15th – September 3rd – 2012
Le Palais de Tokyo, Paris

On the occasion of his exhibition at Le Palais de Tokyo, Fernando Ortega offers a new interpretation of the building inspired by the ordinary incidents, slight leakage of water that flows from the ceilings, which occurred during its renovation. This accidental fall becomes the language that allows him to disrupt the space and to link elements all brought together by water. Thus, among others, two leaks are organized in space, one that falls from the ceiling next to a battery of instruments leaving the virtual idea that water could lead but the potentiality of the action remains absent. The second falls on the architectural model of the Palais de Tokyo emphasizing the association against the nature in an exhibition center.

But the presence of water also has the function to link all the works in the exhibition, to insist on the Seine which flows along the Palace and introduce another river which is the subject of other major works in the exhibition: a series of photographs shows an unspoiled countryside, a smuggler’s boat on a river in Mexico. Refering to this picture,the artist says that during their visit, the boatman made them listen to music but it is interrupted each time by the brevity of the passage. To remedy the artist asked Brian Eno to compose music for this purpose. It is this CD is presented at the end of this set and, when you look at, may be heard by villagers in the boat on another continent.

Humor, distance, poetry, attention to discrete events that occur in reality, the artist transforms contingency into necessity, due to the random matter of new productions and uses a casual everyday situations. He captures events beyond any rule. This taste for the accident sometimes leads to neglect some of its artist authority to make the random properties of the work or its reception. Le Palais de Tokyo is pleased to present Fernando Ortega here, thanks to Sam Art Projects whom will be a guest of the next major Sao Paulo Biennial.